Project - 16

PROJECT - 16

BY

MARTYN J. PASS

Copyright ©
2016
By Martyn J. Pass

Twitter:
@martynjpass

Email:
[email protected]

The right of Martyn J. Pass to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved.
Any unauthorised reprint or use of this material
is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system without express written permission from the
author.

All
characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ALSO BY
THIS AUTHOR

AT THE DAWN OF THE RUINED SUN

WAITING FOR RED
(With Dani
Pass)

SOUL AT WAR

THE WOLF AND THE BEAR

HAGGART'S DAWN

For the lonely...

1.

3 days to live.
That's all I’d given
them when I tried to look out of the fogged up windscreen at the
mass of angry black clouds rolling in from the south.
4 kids, barely over 17 with the worst gear for
this type of country and terrain.

It was late December and the first whispers of winter were in
the pines and the brush and the pike already had a light dusting of
snow on its peak.

72 hours.
Then after that it would
be hunger and thirst. I guessed they'd head for the old US army
base and try to hold up there. That's if they were a little bit
smarter than I'd given them credit for. If they weren't then they'd
head for the city. Then it would be a quick end. I didn't fancy
their chances against the dogs and I sure as hell wasn't going to
go in there after them unless it got desperate.

I hammered the Land Rover up to the top of Hangman's Hill and
parked on a small grass verge that overlooked the valley. It was
tough going and the weeds were quickly taking back the thin vein of
tarmac that marked the last piece of man-made influence in the
otherwise wild woodlands. There were plenty of blowdowns too - pine
trees knocked over in last week's storm and three of them had
splintered and split in the middle of the road.

I climbed down from the 'Rover and looked about. It was cool
outside and my breath formed foggy white clouds in front of my face
as I searched the landscape for any signs of the kids. For miles in
all directions the predominate colours were green and grey and they
were there in abundance. I was looking for something else though; a
flash of yellow or orange, a patch of synthetic fibre or a streak
of bright fabric that broke up the monotony. My eyes had long since
forgotten what 'Outdoor' equipment looked like in the wild and any
deviation from the uniform earthy colours should have attracted my
attention straight away.

On this occasion there was nothing. Nothing to break up the
natural face of the English landscape under its usual dull grey
canopy. I went back to the cab just as a light drizzle began to
fall and found my map. I located the hill I was on, then turned the
map in my hands and orientated it to where I was stood. To the
north-west was the last estimated position of the kids. Four clicks
or so. It was hilly stuff that way but flatter to the west. I
traced a line of least resistance between the tightly packed
contour lines and guessed their journey would take them through the
valley below. The issue was timing. Would they show up soon, or had
they already passed through?

I got back into the cab and reversed the 'Rover until it
couldn't be seen from the valley. Then I went and got my pack from
the boot, taking a litre bottle of water from between the toolbox
and the spare wheel and drinking about half of it in one go. As I
was putting on the pack I drank the rest, adjusting the straps and
buckles until my hips took the bulk of the weight. Then I locked up
the vehicle, put on my woollen hat and gloves and set off down the
side of the hill and into the valley.

3 days.

I thought about their flight over as I tramped through the
knee-high ferns that splashed against my gaiters. It would have
been pretty tough flying all that way in one of those little birds
they still used. The weather along the coast had been bad enough
over the last few weeks and I'd have hated to have been up there in
that little tin can, risking my life just to get to an empty island
like mine. But from speaking to the others I'd had to send back,
the lure of easy money from English relics buried in the cities was
too difficult to resist. There'd been a number of success stories -
those who'd managed to find gold or silver in the ruins, the rare
ones who had found a priceless piece of art missed by the recovery
teams and which had sold for a King's ransom back in the States.
Still they came and still they died despite being told that the
majority of the ones who did find something often never returned.
What lay in the ruins wasn't just sitting there waiting to be
found. Often enough the 'success stories' were far more horrible
than what made it to the TV. Of the two 'celebrities' I'd known
myself, both had taken their prizes from the cold, stiff fingers of
another seeker who'd done all the hard work for them, only to
succumb to hypothermia. One had even found a priceless painting
rolled up and stained with the blood and brain matter of a young
girl who'd had her skull caved in by a collapsing column. I'd
enjoyed burning the painting in front of his eyes when I'd captured
him. I heard that part of the story hadn't made the TV.

When I reached the valley floor I began looking around for
any signs that I was too late. The benefit of doing my job in
England was that there was little or no human spoor unless it had
been made fresh by myself or the treasure hunters. Any that I'd
find in this spot wouldn't be mine; I hadn't been this way for over
three years and the last group had landed near London. I knelt down
and began looking at the long grass, watching as the wind caused it
to sway and looking for any breaks in the pattern. After a few
careful steps I saw flats in the field - depressions and patches of
trampled weeds. I moved slowly over to them, looking back the way
they would have come, then looked in the direction they were
heading. I'd been right about them coming this way, but wrong about
the timing. These tracks were a day old and already the grass was
starting to spring back up.

I went a little way into the scrub on either side just to
eliminate the possibility of missing something, then turned to
follow. At least, I thought, I wouldn't overtake them any time
soon.

I strode through the grass, following the tracks which were
quite uniform in that they were clearly walking in a line and not
in one wide row. I followed along the valley floor for an hour or
so until the tracks turned sharply north. Here I stopped. Further
on I saw a triangle of markings - they'd diverted to a tarn across
the way, then come back to the path. The tarn wasn't visible from
where I was standing and I knew from my map that it was at least
four clicks away - an hour at their pace. It told me quite a bit
about them: they had a map, they had a route and they had a plan. I
just hoped it involved the army base and not the city.

I followed the tracks north and reached the tarn in half an
hour. The grass gave way to stone and I lost their spoor almost at
once. I walked carefully across the mass of slippery broken rocks
and reached the waters edge, kneeling down and sniffing without
getting too close. It was still there, that strong, pungent smell
of sewerage and chemicals and I found myself shaking my head; this
tarn had been contaminated for as long as I could remember and
although I wasn't sure how, I could guess that a pipe had burst
somewhere and was feeding raw, foetid filth into it. Had they
filled their bottles from it? Had they realised the danger? I
wasn't even sure a water filter would have worked on that deadly
liquid. Surely the smell would have been enough warning?

I walked back to the edge of the grass where it met the stone
and walked back and forth until I found their second set of tracks,
the ones that led away from the tarn. I needn't have put much
effort into the search - there was a blue plastic chocolate bar
wrapper on the floor and I picked it up, smelling that awful
American substance they called 'candy' which had never managed to
come close to what we'd used to make. I had to confess that the
wrapper still smelt better than the handful of dried berries and
nuts I was eating for a snack and which required a great deal of
water to wash them down with.

I took up the trail again and carried on, scanning the ground
for further clues and often stopping just to listen and breathe the
air. I could smell the rain coming and I knew it wouldn't be long
off. The clouds were massing overhead now and I tried to put myself
into their shoes, tried to imagine where they were and what they
were feeling. Shelter? There was none for miles, none that I knew
of. Did they have tents? The wrapper was a bit of a clue in itself;
it was a plain candy bar, nothing but empty calories, not the food
of choice for a seasoned hiker or survival expert. I should know -
I'd taught it to US soldiers for long enough. It should have been
an energy bar at least, nuts, fruit, sugar, carbs and protein. Not
just an instant buzz on flat land. It might have been useful to
scale a mountain but not for prolonged walking like they were
doing. My hopes of finding them in one piece were
diminished.

I walked on for another few hours. In my head I went over
what had once been my basic curriculum for the troops sent my way
since I started teaching wilderness survival. Where had the stuff
on food types been? Early on, I expected, though a lot of the
structure changed to suit my students and what conflict they were
involved in. For the Regiment it was a totally different class. I
worked through a few old lectures in my mind, imagined them being
played out again, what I would say differently after nearly 30
years of practising what I preached. It was okay to tell soldiers
what to do when they were on a week long mission with access to the
best kit, but what about this? What about when the kit fails and
you have to adapt? What about when you have to grow your own food
and hunt your own game? What does a long-term survival plan look
like when the cities are contaminated wastes and 9 out of 10 water
supplies are poisoned? That was my world and it had been since the
Panic. Since I was born, as far back as I could
remember.

I stopped for a break as the land began to climb and sat down
on a rock that jutted out from the junction of a trickling stream.
I'd packed a weeks worth of dried meals I'd made myself, breakfast
and tea, but for dinner I'd have to settle for strips of dried beef
and some water. I thought about that candy bar and found it in my
pocket. I took it out and sniffed it again and put it back. It'd
been a long time since I'd smelled something so sweet. The lads in
London hadn't been carrying much kit when I'd found them and all
I'd managed to loot out of their packs were some ready-meals and
half a bag of jelly babies. I'd eaten one a night for two weeks
before they were all gone. I missed those babies.

One of the benefits of being the last Englishman was the
silence. I sat there with my legs crossed at the ankles and just
enjoyed listening to the 'nothing' that comes from a country devoid
of human life. Of course, there were still sounds - birds singing,
the splash and crash of the stream, the gentle whistling of the
easterly wind and the occasional sound of a small animal moving
through the brush. But you couldn't call it noise, really. Noise
was aeroplanes and mobile phones and incessant talking with empty
words - noise for the sake of making noise, of fighting the silence
and filling it with white-noise, just pointless static. As far back
as I could remember I'd never felt the need to put on a TV, even if
I had a signal, just to give me company. Nor did I walk around
talking to myself to fight the growing loneliness as if the silence
could somehow smother me like water to a drowning man. No, I often
did narrate my own actions but that was a habit of old age. 35
years did that to you as if you had an audience who needed to know
what you were thinking.